


to be only, to be every

by ofherlionheart



Series: the boo chronicles [2]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Bending (Avatar TV), Anniversary, Established Relationship, Fluff, Happy Ending, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Museum Curator Zuko, POV Sokka (Avatar), POV Third Person, Physics PhD Candidate Sokka, Tattoos, Yue (Avatar) Lives, Zukka Week 2021, b/c that's zuko (and azula) babey :(, no beta we die like lu ten
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-17
Updated: 2021-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-25 22:33:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30096132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ofherlionheart/pseuds/ofherlionheart
Summary: “It’s May fifth,” Zuko tells him.“Uh, okay. What about it?”Zuko shrugs. “You wanted me to remind you when it was May fifth that it is May fifth, and you refused to tell me why.”Sokka pauses. He does this, sometimes, asking Zuko to be a triple-insurance reminder of important things and dates, but this is an unusually cryptic reminder. Past Sokka knows, though, that Future Sokka is very forgetful, so he’d only be cryptic about something that Future Sokka would remember is extremely important, so important that if he forgot, it would be bad. Is this a batshit way to go about life? Probably, but at least the logic of the practice makes sense to Sokka’s brain.—————The one year anniversary of their relationship is fast-approaching, and Sokka is woefully unprepared.
Relationships: Sokka/Zuko (Avatar)
Series: the boo chronicles [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2211585
Comments: 46
Kudos: 239





	to be only, to be every

**Author's Note:**

> A belated posting for For Day 2: Tattoos!
> 
> Title inspired by "[Turned Out I Was Everyone](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6GU-NrpWvo)" by SASAMI.

Sokka is in love with Zuko’s kitchen. Don’t get him wrong, he’s fond of the little kitchen in his tiny studio on the fourth floor of a six-story walk-up, a kitchen that bears the scars of many twenty-somethings before him trying to teach themselves to cook, but his cubbyhole of a multifunctional kitchen/living room/workout studio has nothing on this gorgeous space.

Zuko’s kitchen is _just_ a kitchen. Sure, it’s an open floor-plan, so there’s no wall between this “room” and the _den_ , as Zuko calls it, but there’s still a clear sense of moving from one space to the next. Sokka, in his kitchen, takes two steps away from his stovetop and suddenly finds himself running into his loveseat, which he capitulated to only because he couldn’t find a couch short enough to accommodate the gorgeous, secondhand walnut dining table that he impulse bought.

He’s mincing garlic and ginger, waiting for the stainless steel sauté pan he just seasoned to cool down, when he hears the apartment door open. “ _Boo_ ,” he croons loudly, to be heard over the music bumping from his speakers—they migrated to Zuko’s apartment many months ago, because Zuko owns a projector of advanced home-theatre level quality, but not a fucking decent pair of speakers.

Zuko appears a moment later, bare feet padding across the hardwood floor, canvas tote bag still looped over his shoulder. He drops a kiss onto Sokka’s shoulder and then shows him what today’s surprise haul is: two pounds of bright green Thai eggplant.

“Incredible,” Sokka says, and Zuko smiles at him before putting the eggplants in the fridge. He takes out a jar of homemade cold brew, and Sokka bites back an automatic protestat consuming coffee after six in the evening. He’s made his arguments to Zuko many times before; Zuko will listen, then maintain unblinking eye contact with Sokka as he drains the entire jar in one go, just to be a little shit.

But since Sokka isn’t up in arms today, Zuko takes a seat at the island and drinks his coffee like a normal person. “It’s May fifth,” Zuko tells him.

“Uh, okay. What about it?”

Zuko shrugs. “You wanted me to remind you when it was May fifth that it is May fifth, and you refused to tell me why.”

Sokka pauses in his mincing. He does this, sometimes, asking Zuko to be a triple-insurance reminder of important things and dates, but this is an unusually cryptic reminder. Past Sokka knows, though, that Future Sokka is very forgetful, so he’d only be cryptic about something that Future Sokka would remember is extremely important, so important that if he forgot, it would be _bad_. Is this a batshit way to go about life? Probably, but at least the logic of the practice makes sense to Sokka’s brain.

What’s something important that would be terrible to forget, but that Past Sokka was worried that Future Sokka _would_ forget anyway? It’s not any of his research or grading deadlines—those have been successfully wrangled by digital calendars—and it’s not anyone’s birthday, because Aang’s already passed in April, and Zuko’s a summer baby and Katara and Hakoda are a week apart from each other in the late fall. He’ll _never_ forget the anniversary of his mother’s death, but when are Hakoda’s anniversaries, with Kya and with Bato? No, Bato was a casual courthouse affair in the late summer, and Kya wanted a winter wedding—

_Wedding!_

“Oh, shit!” Sokka shouts.

Zuko tilts his head. “You good?”

“Yeah, yeah!” Sokka waves the hand holding the chef’s knife dismissively. “Thanks for the reminder.”

“Now will you tell me what it’s about?”

“ _No_.”

Zuko takes a slow sip of coffee, eyes steady on Sokka. “Okay,” he says, an air of snark in his tone, and Sokka would say something witty about it if his mind weren’t freaking out on a completely different plane.

* * *

The next day, he tempts Yue away from her office at lunchtime with promises of paying for the fanciest chirashi they can find within a twenty minute walk of campus, and he knows from the soft sigh she gives before he’s even finished making his case that _she_ knows he’s planning on having a small breakdown at her over their meal. It’s hard to get anything past a woman who was brilliant enough to be the youngest person to have ever been to _outer space_.

Sokka graciously waits until Yue’s had at least one bite of her maguro before blurting, “Our one-year anniversary is in thirteen days, and I have _no idea_ what to do for it.”

Yue chews calmly and swallows before saying, “I’m surprised you thought this warranted chirashi. This seems more like a latte-level crisis.”

“Yue,” Sokka begs, slumping over his own plate of chicken-broccoli teriyaki, “Zuko’s going to ruin me with whatever he ends up doing. I bet he’s been planning it for _months_. And here I am, a terrible boyfriend, who literally asked _my own partner_ to give me a cryptic two-week warning for our anniversary because I knew I’d fuck up and drop the ball.”

Yue hums. “Planning for months sounds more like your style.”

“Yeah, well, clearly something went wrong here.”

“Is it really important to Zuko, that he receives a gift?”

If he really thinks about it, recalling the years when he remembered Zuko’s birthday and remembered to do something about it, Zuko’s not huge on gifts. He appreciates them, sure, and they always bring a warm smile to his face, but Sokka’s never seen a present light him up like a delightfully bad joke told by his uncle, or when they’re at a happy hour with their friends and Katara decides it’s time to tell yet another revealing story about Sokka from their childhood.

“He probably wouldn’t care,” Sokka admits, “but _he’s_ going to do something for _me_.”

“Is your goal to also ‘ruin’ him?”

“No!” Sokka quickly refutes. Emotional devastation is a him thing; he feels a deep (maybe slightly perverse) happiness when he’s unexpectedly presented with evidence that someone else has seen him to his core, particularly things he hasn’t acknowledged to himself or others. _How the hell is your love language feeling attacked?_ Katara’s asked him derisively many times before, but she also never lets him get too deep into a stumbling explanation.

For Zuko, on the other hand, emotional devastation is straight-up not-fun devastation, and Sokka would die if he ever caused that. “No,” Sokka says again. “I just want him to feel even a fraction of the love that I’ll feel when he eviscerates me.”

Yue shakes her head—she also finds Sokka’s love of being destroyed incomprehensible—and carefully transfers the two shrimp in her bowl to the edge of Sokka’s plate. “If he’s not big on gifts,” she says, “maybe you shouldn’t be fretting about the perfect present. What are the things that bring him joy?”

“Taiyaki,” Sokka immediately says. “Singapore, Thailand, Japan. Museums. Following theorist discourse on Twitter. Dinner parties. Prague. Eve Sedgwick and Hortense Spillers. Uh, making really niche lists on Letterboxd under a pseudonym. Campy, sometimes homophobic gay movies from the 90s and early 2000s.”

Yue blinks a few times, and Sokka stops his barrage, though he could probably go on for another couple minutes. He remembers all of Zuko’s interests because he finds them fascinatingly eclectic. If Zuko were a stranger he passed on the street, he’d never clock him as someone who’d rewatch _Miss Congeniality_ and _But I’m a Cheerleader_ back-to-back while snacking on wasabi peas and deriding the critical responses on social media to Preciado’s latest book.

“It seems like you have plenty to work with,” Yue says, kindly, because she has a higher tolerance for Sokka’s insanity than even Zuko. “How about we start with considering something like a dinner party?”

* * *

By the end of lunch, Yue’s helped him outline some actionable items re: Celebrating One Whole Magical Year with Zuko, and Sokka feels relatively stable about it—even excited. He’s distracted for the rest of his work day, and after shooing out the last of the grad students and closing up the physics lab, Sokka rushes to Zuko’s apartment, hoping to get in an hour or two of anniversary-related research before Zuko gets back.

The universe, however, has decided she’s been generous enough to Sokka today: he shoulders open the door to the smell of honey-garlic-soy and the sound of a string quartet fighting to be heard over the hiss of stir fry. He yanks off his shoes and calls, “Honey, I’m home!” as he drops his keys and wallet into the flat dish that Suki made in a pottery masterclass and then gave to them.

Dinner is delicious—Sokka can’t believe he used to date people who didn’t know how to cook, shrugging it off because he could cook perfectly well for two—and he’s washing up the last of the dishes when Zuko asks, “Can you help me with a thing for a project?”

“Sure,” Sokka says, vaguely wondering what he’s agreeing to this time.

_Help with a project_ can mean a wide range of things, Sokka’s learned. Sometimes it’s brushing up on Python and SQL to code a quick program that’ll help Zuko sweep a massive digital catalogue for the precise information he needs; other times it’s gluing multicolored rhinestones to counterfeit Muppets. One particularly hellish time was prying the staples out of a show packet, fixing the incorrectly ordered pages 3/4 and 5/6, and re-binding the packets neatly.

Tonight, Zuko hands him Sokka’s favorite brand of gel pen and a stack of high-quality white paper. They sit at the kitchen island, the aroma of a teak and sandalwood-scented candle filling the air. “I’m going to read some things a few times,” Zuko says. “Can you write them down, word for word, as I go?”

Sokka’s first question is _Why can’t I type_ , but if he could, he knows Zuko would have plopped his laptop in front of Sokka rather than paper. Instead, he asks, “What about punctuation?”

Zuko shrugs. “Whatever you think it should be.”

It’s a weird response from Zuko, of all people, who will sweat over one sentence he’s written in a thirty-page paper for up to _an hour_ because he’s indecisive about where the commas should go, but Sokka rolls with it. “Ready,” he says, pen poised over paper.

Zuko nods, clears his throat, and begins in a slow, steady cadence: “If you let me nestle between your ribs, put down roots and grow like the shooting grasses of fields that do not know the darker acts of metal and men, your body will be my earth and I will make you rich.”

Sokka sticks out his tongue, concentrating on remembering the words—even when Zuko speaks slowly, Sokka can’t write that fast without it being illegible—but it’s hard to keep focus when he can feel Zuko’s eyes _fixed_ on him. “… be my earth,” Sokka echoes, when he’s uncertain at the end, “and I will make you rich?”

“Yes.”

In total, there are five passages of about the same length, and once Zuko finishes the fifth, he reads them all again twice more. Sokka’s hand is a bit sore by the end of it—he spends more time typing than writing, these days, and he hardly ever writes in longhand anymore—but the ache means nothing to him as Zuko shuffles through the sheets now covered in Sokka’s words and a glowing, contented smile spreads across his face. “Thanks, boo,” he says, kissing Sokka’s forehead.

“Anytime,” Sokka replies, and Zuko squeezes his shoulder before disappearing into his room with the papers.

* * *

His plan, now that he has a plan, is working out perfectly.

Even though their anniversary is on a Sunday, Katara and Aang are able to make it up from DC because his sister has to be in NYC anyway for a keynote appearance at a conference on Tuesday. Toph’s in Nepal, doing god-knows-what, but she confirms she’ll call in for part of the event; Mai agrees to be Zuko’s handler for the first half of the day, so he doesn’t come back to the apartment until everything is ready, and Azula assigns herself the task of joining them, because “Zuzu’s learned to say no to you, Mai, but he’s still defenseless against my willingness to make a highly public scene.”

The morning of May nineteenth, Mai shows up at a quarter-to-ten on the dot, letting herself into the apartment with her key and giving only a cursory knock on Zuko’s bedroom door before gliding in and beelining for Zuko’s closet. Sokka yelps, diving beneath the covers (sure, they were only _kissing_ , but it’s their— _Zuko’s_ —bedroom, for god’s sake), and Zuko laughs at him, a comforting hand stroking through Sokka’s unbrushed hair.

By the soft light that manages to penetrate the bedsheet, Sokka can make out the tattoo that sits at the base of Zuko’s sternum: the character 意, in a gorgeous calligraphy based on a panel originally painted by Azula. “When combined with other characters, it’s usually pronounced _ee_ ,” Zuko once told him.

“What does it mean?”

“There isn’t a perfect translation. Will, maybe? As in desire. But it could also mean idea, or mind, or heart, or care.”

The hand in Sokka’s hair slips to the base of his neck and squeezes lightly, and Sokka takes the hint to stop clinging to Zuko and let him out of bed. Surprise and embarrassment abated, Sokka peeks out from under the covers to watch Zuko go into the bathroom and reemerge a moment later to hover in the doorframe of his little walk-in closet.

From here, Sokka can see Zuko’s other tattoos. The largest is the _nang yai_ puppet that covers the width of his right shoulder blade and stretches as far as his neck and the base of his ribcage. The design is based on a puppet Ursa had made herself shortly after she’d reached out to Zuko and Azula after having disappeared for almost fifteen years; Zuko’s reconciliation with his mother was just one of the many tumultuous events that defined the year that Ozai croaked unexpectedly in his sleep. Also on his back, climbing along the vertebrae at the base of his spine, are three sai of different sizes. Sokka knows they’re for Mai; he doesn’t know the exact connection she has to the weapons. Lastly, only half visible from his current angle, is the short line in serif printed on the underside of Zuko’s right bicep: “Made in Singapore.” He’d gotten that one when he was nineteen, he told Sokka. “I was trying to make some profound statement about globalism and identity while asserting a mixed ex-pat ancestry,” he explained with a self-deprecating laugh. “Now I think it’s just funny.”

When Mai’s finally picked an outfit, she gives Zuko a handful of clothes and then pushes him at the bathroom. “I’m glad you didn’t give him any hickeys,” she tells Sokka, perching on the edge of the bed.

Sokka glares at her. “We’re adults. We’re more mature than hickeys in evident places.”

“Tell that to the turtlenecks I’ve been forced to choose for the last three gallery openings.”

Look, Sokka likes to please his man, and how can he say no when Zuko’s begging him to go to town on his favorite sensitive spots? “Think of it as a fun and exciting challenge,” Sokka suggests, and Mai shoves a decorative pillow at his face.

Zuko emerges before their spat-for-the-sake-of-a-spat can escalate, and Mai sweeps out of the room. “I’ll have him back by seven,” she says over her shoulder, and then they’re alone.

Zuko leans over to kiss him, and Sokka hooks a finger into the neck of his collarless button up. When they part, Sokka’s eyes catch on the curling edges of the _nang yai_ , and he asks, “Why tattoos?”

Zuko blinks, surprised by the question. “I think,” he says, considering carefully, “I like them because they’re marks on my body that only I can choose. And, depending on the particular tattoo, only I get to choose who marks me.”

Sokka’s chest aches. Sometimes, by random chance, Zuko’s scar will catch his attention, and he wonders how Zuko isn’t just a deep well of angst and sadness and misery. Then he remembers that Zuko still was a bit like that, when they first met in college, but there’s always been a person there, fighting to grow beyond the miseries that haunted his childhood.

“Beautiful words said by a beautiful man,” Sokka says, brushing a thumb along Zuko’s jaw.

Zuko snorts and kisses him once more before standing. “I’ll see you tonight.”

“Enjoy the shows,” Sokka calls after him.

He listens for the sound of Mai and Zuko leaving the apartment; then he leaps out of bed and straight into his jam-packed day.

Suki, Yue, and Ty Lee show up at half past ten, and Sokka’s jaw drops at the bouquets that Yue brings with her. Just a few days ago, she’d sent him photos of the half-dead discount flowers she nabbed from the corner market; her talent for coaxing grocery store flowers back to life is incredible.

“Where do you want these?” she asks as she removes her shoes. Suki’s already sock-footed in the kitchen, unpacking her bag crammed with niche kitchenware.

“On the coffee table in the den is fine, for now,” Sokka says.

Ty Lee flings her arms around his neck, and Sokka stoops to return her hug. “Sokka, this idea is _so cute_.”

“Yue’s the one who really thought of it,” he protests.

“I gave you a skeleton,” Yue replies. “You’re the who fleshed it out with the details.”

They spend the day cooking, cleaning, and decorating, and Sokka’s buzzing from the kindness and laughter and goodwill that bounces all around the space. Aang and Katara arrive around six, Katara bearing a massive handle of high-end whiskey, and Aang’s the first one to mention why they’re even gathered here, throwing an arm around Sokka and shouting, “Happy one year! I knew you and Zuko would make it.”

“Who doubted that they would?” Suki asks from where she’s whisking a bowl of batter over the sink.

“Sokka,” Katara, Aang, and Ty Lee answer in unison, and Sokka hides his face at the flat expression Suki gives him. Yue pats his shoulder consolingly.

The hour of Zuko’s return with Mai and Azula draws closer, and the finishing touches come together: Yue’s arrangements move to the kitchen island, food is plated and laid out, and Aang cleans the crime scene of a range to a gleaming polish. Suki and Katara start passing out drinks; Sokka switches over to a chiller playlist. They’re just starting to fill their plates when the apartment door opens, and Sokka distinctly hears Zuko ask, “Why the fuck are there so many shoes?”

He exchanges a look with Suki, who winks and then ushers everyone else over to the large, low coffee table where they take meals when there’s more than three people around.

Sokka gets to witness Zuko take it all in, from the food to the cheesy silver streamers to the platter of Suki’s homemade taiyaki, and he watches as his jaw first drops, then lifts into a wide smile. His eyes find Sokka’s. “Hey,” Sokka says, not even fighting the proud grin splitting his cheeks, “How was your day?”

Zuko marches right up to Sokka, cradling his jaw and kissing him sweetly. “Keeps getting better.”

Dinner lasts hours. Toph calls, roasts the hell out of everyone sitting around the table, and then has to go catch a flight to Malaysia. No one makes big fanfare out of the anniversary, but the stories they tell keep coming back to Sokka, to Zuko, to Zuko and Sokka, to Sokka and Zuko. “Hey Sokka,” Suki says when she’s on her third drink, “Remember what you said to me the day after you met Zuko?”

“Don’t you dare—”

“‘Is your rule against dating customers followed by all Kyoshi Coffee Co employees? I’m planning on trapping the new twunk as soon as possible.’”

Sokka drops his forehead to the tabletop at the raucous laughter. Zuko says, earnestly, “I think when we first met, I was still more of a twink.”

When Sokka looks up again, he catches Azula’s smirk right before she says, “Zuzu hibernated in my guest room for four days after Sokka introduced him to Zahra.”

“And then he spent another three days on my couch,” Mai adds.

“You _what?_ ” Sokka asks.

Zuko’s cheeks flush in a way that has nothing to do with the drink in his hand. “I wasn’t ready for the way you would look at her.”

Ty Lee leans across the corner of the table to grab Sokka’s arm. “It was even funnier because he didn’t realize he liked you for _another_ four years.”

Sokka does the mental math and turns to Zuko. “You knew for _two years_ before we went to Zahra’s wedding?”

“How _did_ you realize, Zuko?” Katara asks.

Somehow, Zuko looks even more embarrassed. “We’d made plans to get lunch, one weekend. Just a random day—there wasn’t a reason for it. I was running late, and a block from the restaurant, Sokka ran by me.” He turns to Sokka, eyes glinting. “You were full-on sprinting. And I watched as you talked to the host, and then relaxed and turned back—”

“And then I saw you,” Sokka suddenly remembers. It hadn’t even occurred to him, back when it happened, that he must have passed Zuko while rushing to his destination.

“And you ran right back to me.”

“That was the moment?” he asks quietly.

Zuko gives him a small smile. “I think I laughed at you, and thought something like, _Only Sokka_. Only Sokka would sprint down Sixth Ave in broad daylight. Only Sokka would run for an ordinary lunch that didn’t really matter. Only Sokka would be so excited to see a friend he saw just a couple days ago. And then I realized _only Sokka_ is what I thought about a lot of things.”

Sokka’s heart skips a beat; then he grabs Zuko’s face and kisses him until someone throws a bread roll at his head.

* * *

Their friends help clean up after the dinner, and it’s almost midnight by the time Sokka’s seeing the last of them out the door. “Thank you,” he whispers emphatically in Yue’s ear, and she hugs him tighter.

“You’re full of love and care and thoughtfulness, Sokka,” she replies. “We’re always here to help you express those things out loud.”

She and Suki depart, and Sokka goes in search of Zuko. Eventually, he tries the bedroom and finally hears Zuko moving around the bathroom. “Boo!” he calls.

“Check the bed!”

Sokka looks at the bed and finds a white envelope with his name printed on it. He picks it up; it feels heavy, which isn’t surprising—Zuko’s obsessed with high quality stationary. “Do I open it?” he shouts.

“Please.”

Inside the envelope is a greeting card with an embossed design of rolling, grassy hills beneath an abstracted orange sun. When he opens it, a thick square of folded papers falls out; he picks it up while reading the concise, handwritten note within:

_Sokka,_

_I know we’re celebrating one year, but I want you to know you’ve been shaping my life and my world for much longer than that. These pages are only a small sample, made tangible._

_Love,_

_Zuko_

He carefully sets the card on the comforter and opens the folded papers.

He instantly recognizes what they are from their format and the melange of languages. Since before Sokka’s known him, Zuko’s kept a disgustingly long document of phrases, quotes, and passages that, for whatever reason, have struck him. He keeps them in their original language, which explains why Sokka’s looking at a whole blend of alphabets, primarily English, Thai script, and Japanese, but also some Chinese (both Mandarin and Cantonese, Sokka’s sure), Korean, French, Portuguese, and even the occasional German and Russian. Zuko also notes the attribution for and date he encountered the phrase.

The document pages are numbered; the page on top has a 23 on the bottom right, and a quick flip confirms it’s the earliest page currently sitting in Sokka’s hands. The last one is page 478. Obviously, Sokka’s not holding 455 sheets of paper right now, so there must be a reason Zuko printed these specifically. He fans through them quickly again, wondering if a pattern will leap out at him, and this time notices that one passage, on page 37, is circled in blue ink.

_If you let me nestle between your ribs, put down roots and grow like the shooting grasses of fields that do not know the darker acts of metal and men, your body will be my earth and I will make you rich_.

And then, the attribution: _Sokka_.

_He_ wrote this?

Sokka glances at the date, and suddenly he remembers the final portfolio he had to put together for a creative nonfiction class he took his senior fall, thinking it would be an easy A. By the end of the semester, he regretted taking the class—not for the class itself and its unexpected difficulty, but because he ended up dedicating to it so many hours he didn’t have to spare, between his research thesis and physics seminars and part-time job. He definitely cried when trying to put the finishing touches on this portfolio at three in the morning, and he definitely complained about it to Zuko, who instantly replied with an offer to look it over, with his fresh eyes, for typos.

Heart pounding, Sokka takes a closer look at the other papers, and finds that each page has at least one thing attributed to him. Some of them, he doesn’t remember saying or writing; others he remembers were texts or quips, and one he even recalls from a drunk voicemail he left Zuko two years ago, in which he tried to explain why sea ice dynamics probably held the secrets to the universe.

If these pages are a representative sample of Zuko’s document, then the shit Sokka says has been appearing between lines from literal academic behemoths and cultural icons for years. How the hell did Sokka earn himself a spot next to names like these?

What is Zuko trying to say to him?

There’s movement in the corner of his eye, and he looks up to see Zuko leaning in the doorway, his shirt unbuttoned and hanging loose. Azula’s tattoo peaks out from behind the edges of his loosely folded arms. “Can you help me with something?” Zuko asks quietly.

Sokka nods, mind still reeling, and he forgets to drop the pages in his hand until they’re both in the bathroom, Sokka sitting on the edge of Zuko’s tub. Carefully, he refolds the papers, but he can’t quite bring himself to put them in his pocket just yet.

“Zuko,” he says, but then stops, since his heart is in his throat and his brain isn’t giving him any real words, anyway.

Zuko crouches before him, resting his hands on Sokka’s thighs. “I’ve loved this past year,” he says, pressing a kiss to Sokka’s knee, “but I didn’t want a celebration of one year to make you—or me—think that that’s when we began. Before I loved you, you were one of the brightest fixtures in my life. You’re one of the people that kept me from sinking back to a dark place.”

He stands again and pulls off his shirt, draping it over the edge of the tub. There’s a bandage over his left ribs, and he raises his arm and turns his side to Sokka. “Could you?”

Sokka tucks the pages into his back pocket and lifts his hands to Zuko's side. His skin is warm, like always, and Sokka’s careful when peeling back the adhesive edges of the gauze. The part of his brain that’s still functional recognizes the bandage must be for a new tattoo, but even when it’s fully visible, it takes Sokka a second to register what he’s looking at.

It’s his handwriting, in navy-black ink, nestled between two of Zuko’s ribs:

_your body will be my earth_

“What,” Sokka breathes.

Zuko laughs, nervously, and Sokka remembers, from just this morning, ironically: _only I get to choose who marks me_.

He wants to touch it, but at the last minute settles for grabbing Zuko’s waist; he feels like it’s not a good thing to touch a very fresh, still healing tattoo. “That project,” he says.

“Yeah. Um, sorry for lying about that.”

Sokka tears his eyes away from the tattoo. “Wait, did I originally write all the passages you made me write down that night?”

“No! They others weren’t yours. I thought you would’ve recognized your own writing, and I had a whole story ready about a friend who works with handwriting was developing a show around identity and manifesting the self—whatever. Either way, you didn’t ask. Or recognize it.”

He’s amused, now, and Zuko’s laughter has always effortlessly tugged smiles out of Sokka. He leans forward and drops his forehead against Zuko’s stomach, feeling Zuko’s hand curve around his neck. “Why this one?” he asks. “Why not ‘I’d fuck Freud if it meant I didn’t have to face my stepdad right now?’”

Zuko snorts. “When I read that essay,” he says, “it felt like I finally understood you.”

Sokka lifts his head. “What? Wasn’t that essay, like, write about you and nature?”

“'Let me nestle between your ribs … your body will be my earth, and I will make you rich.'”

Sokka’s cheeks warm at hearing his words through the filter of Zuko’s gentle voice. “Yeah?” he says uncertainly.

“Sokka. You …” Zuko looks up, as if the right words are floating somewhere near the ceiling. “You sometimes have this notion that people won’t let you in, or they only keep you around, because of what you can give them. For a long time, I couldn’t understand why you were always so anxious about _always_ providing for other people, without them asking, or even when they’d be fine on their own. But then I read this, and it made sense. You feel like you can’t have something tangled and intimate unless you’re constantly giving back, but…”

He looks into Sokka’s eyes, and Sokka feels like his ribs are going to shatter from the pressure in his chest. “I want to be the earth where you put roots down,” Zuko says, “solely because I _want you to grow_.”

The back of Sokka’s eyes sting, and he throws his arms around Zuko’s middle to hide his face in Zuko’s stomach.

Zuko makes a startled noise, but Sokka can’t respond to that, right now, overwhelmed by the air rushing out of his lungs and by a feeling of nakedness that’s immediately followed by _relief_. His tears fall, and he gasps and inhales for what seems like the first time in five minutes, shaking with this sense of release. He feels like walls and scaffolding and infrastructure are crumbling to dust inside of him, and it feels disastrously wonderful to let go of this fight against gravity. He inhales, gulping air, and his mind finally centers again around one crystalized thought: it’s so much easier to be the messy, messed-up person he is when there’s someone out there who sees him fully, who can share and ease the burden by the mere act of witnessing.

“Sokka?” Zuko’s asking. “Are you crying?”

Sokka emerges from the shadowy hollow created by the press of their bodies and gives Zuko a watery smile. “Yes, but I promise it’s a good thing.”

Relief washes over Zuko’s expression, and he wipes the tears from Sokka’s face. “I love you, boo,” he says, and Sokka laughs deliriously, tugging at Zuko’s arms until he bends over and Sokka can kiss him.

* * *

Five months later, Sokka’s walking in tight circles outside of the physics department and hoping against hope that, in spite of the sun and his maniacal pacing, he hasn’t sweated through his button-up shirt. Mai chose it for this occasion specifically; she’d be extremely disappointed if he had to change it out for the back-up hanging in his closet of an office.

He’s mumbling his concluding points under his breath and beginning circle 87 when he happens to glance up and catch sight of the most distracting and reassuring person he could have encountered right now: Zuko, striding easily down the paved stone walk, turning the heads of undergrad and graduate students alike in his tailor-made jeans, slim black turtleneck, and lightweight but structured I’m-a-fashionable-New-Yorker jacket.

“Hi,” Sokka tries to say and chokes on his own spit.

Zuko pats his back with a grimace as Sokka coughs it out. A water bottle appears in Sokka’s hand; he unquestioningly guzzles back half of it. “Thanks,” he says once he’s regained his voice. What a nightmare that would have been—ten minutes before his PhD dissertation defense, and _he loses his voice_.

He straightens up, and Zuko reaches out to fix a few flyaway strands of Sokka’s hair. “How are you feeling?” he murmurs, eyes still focused on the top of Sokka’s head.

“Like if I run away now, I won’t end up doing this, and therefore I will not fail.”

Zuko frowns at him. “Sokka.”

“I mean, it’s just a possibility. I’m not giving you any probabilities,” Sokka babbles.

Zuko grabs Sokka’s free hand and guides it beneath his jacket, pressing it against his left ribcage until Sokka’s fingers relax and splay out. He feels Zuko’s lungs swell, and he tries to match their steady pace. Closing his eyes, he imagines the tattoo underneath his hand.

_Your body will be my earth_ , Sokka thinks. _Zuko wants me to grow_.

When Zuko got the tattoo, he hadn’t anticipated this, but it’s become a sort of shorthand for them: Sokka freaks out about something that’s making him extremely anxious, Zuko puts Sokka’s hand over the tattoo, and Sokka’s reminded that everything in life actually is, generally, pretty manageable. He’s too fond of creating obstacles that exist only inside his head.

He opens his eyes, and Zuko smiles reassuringly at him. “I’m right here,” Zuko says, “And I’ll still be here right after. Okay?”

“Yeah, I understand object permanence.”

Zuko rolls his eyes. “Get in there,” he says, jerking his head toward the building. “You’re gonna crush it.”

Sokka removes his hand from Zuko’s jacket, kisses his forehead, and marches into the building to defend the case for making him a doctor.

**Author's Note:**

> come talk to me on tumblr @[ofherlionheart](https://ofherlionheart.tumblr.com)!


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